For many years, I struggled with problems spelling and had a smaller vocabulary than most of my peers. I remember all the way back in elementary school, I would often confuse letters like B and D and Q and P. During the time I was in high school, I was being cyberbullied because of my lack of spelling abilities. Some people even thought English was not my first language.
One day I got tired of all the insults I was getting due to my disabilities. I decided to improve my vocabulary by visiting dictionary.com — especially their thesaurus section. I would type in words I knew and see synonyms for those words. For example, I might type in a word like “talkative” and get a word like “loquacious.” As a result, my vocabulary eventually began to improve. Also, I found their pronunciation features were really helpful in knowing how to pronounce words accurately. Eventually, I started to learn which letters made which sounds in the English language and that helped me spell a whole lot better. One method of learning spelling is to use spellcheck on your computer and smartphone.
I remember having to study Spanish grammar in high school. While Spanish grammar is slightly different from English, there are several patterns you can pick up on. For example, English words ending in “tive” often translate as “tivo,” and the Spanish “ción” is usually “tion” in English. Learning these patterns, I was able to pick up on patterns in English as well. Plus I started to learn how to structure sentences correctly, and when to use things like commas and semicolons.
One of several benefits of improving my spelling abilities was my opportunity to be a contributing writer for Teen Scene Magazine, which had around 500,000 monthly readers at the time. I was fortunate to write several articles for their website.
While I still don’t write perfectly, I can definitely say that my writing abilities have greatly improved.
I hope this article has helped you to feel empowered about overcoming your dysgraphia. In my experience, it can get a lot better if you are willing to put forth the effort.
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I'm a 28 year old from Florida that has Aspergers and Bi Polar Disorder. I personally suffer from Depression and Anxiety.
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